The First Amendment under 'progressive' siege

The genius of the Founding Fathers was their ability to write the Constitution in the plain English that everybody could understand. Lawyers, who can employ entire boring paragraphs to say "good morning" (many young women have dozed off while their lawyer swains were on their knees with a proposal of marriage) would inflict damage later.

A good lawyer, or even a bad one, can put loopholes in any proposal. To wit, Elena Kagans explanation of the First Amendment. It's perfectly OK, she wrote in the University of Chicago Law Review, for the government to restrict free speech as long as it means well and calls it something else. The word "restrictions" sounds bad, like a leather restraint, but Mzz Kagan's "redistribution of speech" can sound benign, like free cheese. Who doesn't like cheese? She argued that the government can employ Orwellian restrictions on speech if it thinks such speech might "harm" others, either by direct action or inciting someone else to take direct action. Who gets to decide when such restrictions are imposed for the greater good? Why, the government, of course.

Here's how the Founding Fathers, ever suspicious of ambitious Lilliputians, wrote the guarantee of free speech: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Note that the First Amendment does not say that Congress "should" make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or that it would be nice if it didn't. The operative words are "shall make no law."

Libs Use Their Jump To Conclusions Mat

A home grown terrorist who doesn't like the healthcare bill? NOPE! A young Mulsim terrorist who is also a registered Democrat!



This bitch is upset that this nice young Pakistani man "who just wanted to come to America because it's the place to be" did it instead of an evil white conservative American.



Here's Rush talking about it


Taken from Casey Henrickson's site: http://kxnt.cbslocal.com/2010/05/04/times-square-terrorist-says-he-acted-alone-is-registered-democrat/

How to Lose Friends & Influence People by Barry O

Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner'

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.

The Likud leader has to try to square the rigorous demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington even though Israel needs US backing in confronting the threat of a nuclear Iran.

“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.

In their meeting Mr Obama set out expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the ten-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.

Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.

Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay at the White House to consider his proposals so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Mr Obama as saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”

With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the telephone line they had been lent for their consultations. Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, went to the Israeli Embassy to ensure that the Americans were not listening in.

The meeting came barely a day after Mr Obama’s health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues to focus seriously on the Middle East.

You Lie!

He's saying the exact opposite of how this tax reform bill was passed.

I'm ready for the civil war. Bring it on commies. I won't let you keep stealing more and more from me.

Reconciliation

From Wikipedia: Clinton wanted to use reconciliation to pass his 1993 health care plan, but Senator Robert Byrd insisted that the health care plan was out of bounds for a process that is theoretically about budgets.

How low can we go?

Obama pushes forward with Health Care

Obama pushes forward with Health Care

President Barack Obama is making a fresh attempt to rescue his health care overhaul by proposing a measure that would allow the government to deny or roll back egregious insurance premium increases that infuriate consumers.

Coming just days before a White House health care summit with congressional leaders of both parties, Obama's legislative proposal, which will be unveiled later Monday, likely represents the president's last chance to salvage his signature issue.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because details have not yet been officially released, said the insurance rate proposal would give the federal Health and Human Services Department - in conjunction with state authorities - the power to deny substantial premium increases, limit them, or demand rebates for consumers.

"The fundamental point I want to make is the arrogance of all of this. You know, they are saying: 'Ignore the wishes of the American people. We know more about this than you do. And we're going to jam it down your throats no matter what.' That is why the public is so angry at this Congress and this administration over this issue," said McConnell, R-Ky, speaking on "Fox News Sunday."

Oversight of insurance companies has traditionally been a state responsibility. The proposal for a new federal role calls for setting up a new seven-member Health Insurance Rate Authority that would monitor insurance industry behavior and issue an annual report. States that beef up their consumer protection programs would be eligible for a share of $250 million in federal grants.